The Importance of Academic (History) Writing | The Scholarly Kitchen

How do we think about our responsibility as researchers and writers to communicate the significance of our work to our professional peers, as well as to engage the public? Last week a conversation erupted on Twitter, prompted by a keynote address at a conference on “High Stakes History” at Columbia. The event was part of Columbia’s “History in Action,” a pilot program funded by the American Historical Association-Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Career Diversity Initiative. A lot of social media focused on Jill Lepore’s keynote. A Professor at Harvard and a staff writer for the New Yorker, and the author of an enviable corpus of thoughtful, engaging and briskly-selling books on a wide range of topics, Lepore put her hand right on the high voltage rail of a humanist’s nervous system. Who do we write for, and why do we write the way we do?